Health Services Dail Éireann — 2026-09-30 ============================================================ Thomas Gould (SF), Cork North-Central Can the Minister of State imagine a person's husband or partner being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in their late 50s, then having to search for a nursing home with an Alzheimer's-specific dementia unit when they are 65, and just when they have settled into their new home, they are being evicted? Can the Minister of State imagine that? Can he imagine a person whose mother had passed away over the summer then being told their father has to find a new home after eight years of living in the Sarsfield Court dementia-specific unit? This is a unit where the patients are loved and cared for by the staff and their families do not want to see them moved from it. A man in his 80s contacted me. His wife is in the Sarsfield Court dementia unit. He lives not far from it, and he walks to it or gets a spin from his neighbours, brilliant neighbours, who bring him there. He goes there four or five times a week now. If his wife is evicted from Sarsfield Court on 10 or 12 October, he might not be able to visit her that often. He might only be able to go once or two times a week. This is the love of his life. Margaret is her name. She worked in Sarsfield Court for 20 years, and when she went in there as a patient, the nurses and staff brought her in with the love of friends. It was like a family. Her husband, Eddie, tells a beautiful story about when they were together. They are 50 years married this year and 54 years together, and now Margaret is facing eviction. This is the love of Eddie's life and at a time when she needs him, he is trying to stand up for her because he believes that to move her and the other seven or eight patients out of Sarsfield Court is wrong. Can the Minister of State explain to me why the Government is closing the Sarsfield Court dementia unit? The reality for people who have family members there is that not one of them wants to see their family members moved. Sarsfield Court has about 99 acres of green fields and trees. This is a beautiful setting. I know the Minister of State is going to tell me the mental health unit is being moved down from the second floor because those patients do not have access to the outside area but that is the HSE's fault. There is another unit very close to it in Sarsfield Court. You could puck a sliotar to it. It is unit five. If a small bit of investment was put into it, the mental health patients could go in there and the dementia patients could stay in their home. This is their home. Moving these patients is an insult to their families. It is an insult to people who have worked all their lives and now they are suffering from Alzheimer's disease and dementia, which is an absolutely horrible disease. The State, the Minister of State and his Government are evicting people from their homes. How can the Minister of State stand over it? I plead with him today to stop the closure of Sarsfield Court dementia unit in Glanmire. I could fill that unit today. The Minister of State will know that I have also raised the issue of Heather House, where a new unit is to be opened with 17 beds. What is the point of closing 16 beds in Glanmire to open 17 in St. Mary's? We need more beds for people with dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Since 1954, Sarsfield Court has been a hospital. That is as long as I have been alive. Slowly but surely, the Government and the HSE have taken the decision to wind it down. I am looking for answers as to why. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-30/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-30